A Hawaii soldier who fell in battle during the Korean War was one of seven service members retroactively awarded the Medal of Honor Friday, the highest U.S. military award for courage in wartime.
Pvt. Bruno Orig was serving with Company G of the 2nd Infantry Division’s 23rd Infantry Regiment near Chipyong-ni in South Korea on Feb. 15, 1951, where American and French forces were trying to repel a numerically superior Chinese force.
He was returning to his unit from a wire-laying mission when he saw several fellow soldiers who had been wounded in an ongoing enemy attack. Orig rushed to help them and performed first aid under fire. Working with fellow soldiers, he began moving the wounded to safety, making several trips.
During one of these trips, he saw that all except one man in a machine gun crew had been wounded. According to the medal citation, “without hesitation, he volunteered to man the weapon. Remaining in this position, Private Orig placed such effective fire on the enemy that a withdrawing friendly platoon was able to move back without a single casualty.”
He continued firing on advancing enemy forces until the Company G’s positions were overrun. According to the citation, after his comrades retook lost ground later that day, “Private Orig was found dead beside his weapon and the area in front of his gun was littered with enemy dead.”
At a ceremony Friday at the White House, Orig’s sister Loretta Orig, 91, of Kalihi, received the Medal of Honor from President Joe Biden on her brother’s behalf along with family members Charles Allen III, Elia Allen and Francis Kau.
Of the seven service members to receive the award, six received them posthumously.
“These are genuine, to their core heroes,” Biden said during the ceremony. “Heroes of different ranks, different positions and even different generations. But heroes who all went above and beyond the call of duty — heroes who all deserve our nation’s highest and oldest military recognition, the Medal of Honor.”
Orig was initially awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest military award for courage in battle. The others recognized Friday similarly had previously received lower awards.
In 2021, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directed a new review of the actions of veterans of certain minorities, including Asian and Pacific Islander service members, to determine if their actions had warranted the Medal of Honor.
The military has launched several reviews of awards for bravery. Many troops recommended by comrades and immediate superiors for the Medal of Honor for acts of valor ultimately received lesser awards due to discrimination by higher-ranking officials who reviewed the recommendations.
According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, of the over 3,500 recipients, only 94 Black service members or civilian employees have received the award to date, along with 59 Latino and 35 Asian or Pacific Islander service members or civilian employees.
Bruno Orig was born in Hawaii in 1930 to Filipino immigrant parents and was raised in Damon Tract near the Honolulu airport. He was one of eight siblings. His father, stepfather and older brother served in the U.S. Army during the world wars.
Orig was 11 years old and living in Honolulu when Pearl Harbor was attacked Dec. 7, 1941. After graduating from Farrington High School in 1949, he followed family tradition and enlisted, training as a light weapons infantryman. After his death on the Korean Peninsula, his younger brother, Francis Omboy, would serve in the Army and fight in Vietnam.
Loretta Orig is the last of his surviving siblings, but according to the Army, later generations of the family have continued to serve.
U.S. Rep Ed Case of Hawaii attended Friday’s White House ceremony with Orig’s family.
“This true son of Hawai‘i gave the ultimate measure of devotion to save the lives of his comrades, and that our country has the capacity to right wrongs of omission decades later, represents the very best of our military and of our nation,” Case said in a statement.
The other recipients recognized Friday were Pfc. Wataru Nakamura, Cpl. Fred B. McGee, Pfc. Charles R. Johnson, Gen. Richard E. Cavazos, Capt. Hugh R. Nelson Jr. and Spc. 4th Class Kenneth J. David.
David, the only living recipient of the bunch, received his award for actions May 7, 1970, in Vietnam’s Thua Thien Province while serving with the 101st Airborne.
“Today we award these individuals a Medal of Honor,” Biden said. “We can’t stop here. Together as a nation, it is up to us to give this medal meaning. To keep fighting. To keep fighting for one another, for each other. To keep defending everything these heroes fought for and many of them died for.”
